Warner (English/Rutgers Univ.) challenges the current stodginess of queer activism—focused as it is on the gay community’s hope to be considered “normal”—through his incisive critique of the banalities and dangers of such normalcy. Criticizing the way some identities are deemed normal while others are not (Ö la Foucault), Warner delineates with lapidary skill the problems of the cultural constructions of the normal, how heterosexual lives are thus validated at the expense of the queer. Using a smoothly textured argumentative style, Warner showcases the functioning of shame within a conservative ideological framework to reward some identities and punish others. His argument stands strongest when he concentrates on how the eradication of shame from sexuality would liberate queer communities from the monolith of marriage and how the rejection of normalcy would accord the gay community a liberated space within the spheres of the sexual culture. Ironically, the trouble with The Trouble with Normal is that it directs its arguments toward the queer community rather than the straight one. Telling gay people that, for various ethical reasons, they shouldn’t even want to marry, when they already can’t, does not change the fact that laws that enfranchise some while disenfranchising others are discriminatory. Warner’s rhetoric persuasively reveals the hierarchical parameters of marriage and the constraints of normalcy, but a more universal approach to his topic would delineate the limitations of marriage for all people—not just queer people. In the end, his polemic leaves standing discriminatory treatment of queers for the sake of a theoretical attack on normalcy. Warner’s ethical vision succeeds as a utopian revelation of sex freed from shame, but a sharper eye for the real-life ramifications of such an outlook might have revealed its limitations.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-684-86529-7
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1999
A measured account of the development of the Soviet bomb program by Holloway (Political Science/Stanford, The Soviet Union and the Arms Race, 1983) that contrives to be both technically comprehensive and gripping. Using interviews with some of the main protagonists, such as Kapitsa and Sakharov (though before they were able to talk fully), and access to those archives that have become available in Russia, Holloway clarifies a number of issues. He confirms that the Soviets were heavily dependent on espionage to provide both a sense of the seriousness with which the British (and later the Americans) were pursuing nuclear weapons, and guidelines to their methods. Still, the success of the Soviet Union in constructing such a weapon, in almost the same amount of time as the US, was a ``remarkable feat,'' given the devastation of the Soviet economy after the war. The Communist command-administrative system, Holloway notes, ``showed itself able to mobilize resources on a massive scale, and to channel them into a top priority project.'' It was, however, at immense cost both in terms of the hundreds of thousands of prisoners toiling in the uranium mines and elsewhere, the appalling health and safety record, and the damage to the environment. The building of the hydrogen bomb, by contrast, was largely and no less remarkably an indigenous Soviet achievement. Little credit seems due to Stalin, who was responsible for shooting many of the top physicists during the purges and who understood the significance of nuclear weapons only after the explosion at Alamogordo. Nor does Holloway think much of Stalin's postwar policies, which succeeded in unifying the West and causing it to rearm, though he concludes that Stalin's refusal to be browbeaten made the US more cautious about asserting its nuclear monopoly. What could have been a dry technical and analytical study is enlivened by the immensity of the issues at stake and the extraordinary characters populating the story.
Pub Date: Sept. 21, 1994
ISBN: 0-300-06056-4
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1994
A poignant, heartfelt account of caring for children dying of AIDS. McCarroll, known as Brother Toby, initially retraces some of what he covered in Morning-Glory Babies (1988) about the formation of the Starcross Community, a lay Benedictine monastery in Sonoma, Calif. The community has been alternately tolerated and rejected by the Catholic hierarchy, which is apparently leery of its New Age influences. The celibates, both male and female, found their calling in adopting unwanted children, most of whom are HIV- positive. They soon attracted national attention for their efforts. Most of this slim volume is devoted to relating the stories of two particular children who challenged and changed Brother Toby's life in special ways. Tina, whom the author calls his ``daughter,'' was born and brought to the monastery when the monk was 57, having already raised and lost children of his own. Continually weakened by the virus and hospitalized with AIDS-related infections, Tina died three years later. Before she did, however, she grew into a willful, loving toddler who had her adopted father wrapped around her little finger. The other story is that of Brother Toby's goddaughter, Dana Rica. She was Romanian, and much of the book recounts the community's struggles with that country's bureaucracy on behalf of Dana Rica and other afflicted children. The girl's visit to Starcross was a high point for Brother Toby. His life, like the book, is filled with little miracles—a father singing to his daughter; watching a child play, dance, or laugh—and a quiet faith that death does not have the last word. Even with the grim subject matter and all the pain, this is a triumphant story that never degenerates into banality. It is the account of a group of people determined to make a difference—and of those who made a difference to them.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-312-11253-X
Page Count: 112
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1994
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